The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for the prevention of pressures sores.
Pressure sores, such as bedsores or decubitus ulcers, are caused by the continuous pressure of a bed, chair, shoe, or the like on an unfeeling or uninnervated part of a person's body. Such sores are slow and difficult to heal, and present a serious danger to persons who are subjected to sensory loss of a part of their body as a result of, for example, vascular damage or neural damage. Thus, normal persons will start to feel pain when subjected to continuous local pressure and will therefore shift their body automatically to lessen the discomfort, but patients having a sensory loss are deprived of this protection and are therefore common victims of pressure sores. Heretofore, the most common way of reducing the formation of such sores was to provide padding for the affected area, or periodically to move the patient in order to prevent the continuous application of the pressure to the discrete unfeeling points on his body.